DNA Lounge set to reopen tomorrow / New owner brings top technology

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, July 12, 2001

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drums and tuba

drums and tuba

DNA Lounge set to reopen tomorrow / New owner brings top technology

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It takes some serious faith to schedule a grand opening for Friday the 13th. The DNA Lounge, one of the longtime anchors of the once-raging 11th Street nightlife corridor, reopens tomorrow after more than a year in the dark.

New owner and Netscape co-founder Jamie Zawinski and his henchmen have been hard at work wiring the place for state-of-the-art sound and videography. Forthcoming events include Red Square, a DJ night presented by Qool in association with Kremlin, on Saturday, and Blasthaus' Joypad, with DJs Jonah Sharp and Andrew Jervis and vintage low-tech video games from BOLT, on Thursday.

DRUMS & TUBA: They've actually got guitars and electronics, and more brass instruments besides the lovable tuba, too. The band members don't mean to mislead: When this band was a twosome, featuring just drums and tuba, the name was Just Drums and Tuba.

Now a trio, this oddball ensemble formed in Austin with members from New York; Madison, Wis.; and Knoxville, Tenn. The group records for Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe label, which helps explain the mishmash of curiosity seekers it attracts -- punks, post-rockers and next-generation hippies. Marching band was never so wayward.

ABOUT A BOY: "What came first, the music or the misery?" the Rob Gordon character asks in "High Fidelity." In Nick Hornby's world, misery is a wondrous thing.

Hornby, author of the novel that inspired the most amusing movie ever made about socially inept record collectors, has written a new novel, "How to Be Good." This one is written from the perspective of a woman, who is biologically incapable of obsessing over inane pop trivia.

Hornby, now the New Yorker's pop music critic, could never stray too far from pop. He knows only too well that, for some of us, at least, all those messy emotions would make no sense at all without our beloved records.

Nick Hornby, 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Park Branch Library, 1833 Page at Cole, San Francisco. Free. For more information call the Booksmith at (415) 863-8688.

The author also speaks at 12:30 Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club, 595 Market at Second, San Francisco. Tickets are $7-$10. Call (415) 597-6705.

GLAD TO BE GAY: A quarter-century before Pansy Division, there was Tom Robinson, England's openly queer punk rocker. A major label deal, an album produced by Todd Rundgren, an early associate of Rock Against Racism and Amnesty International -- this was a happening guy.

Sometime in the '80s, Robinson fell out of pop favor. Much weirder, he fell in love with a woman (tabloid headline: "Britain's No. 1 Gay in Love With a Girl Biker").

"The point about bisexuality," he says these days, "is that you're asking something other than 'What sex is this person?' "

The real question, for our purposes: What's the live show like now -- geezer, or young-at-heart?